MACA is a non-partisan, grass roots, nationwide effort, to UNITE ALL Child Advocates together in solidarity on April 22, 2013 for peaceful demonstrations against child abuse and crimes against children in the U.S.

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April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. We seek to raise awareness of and ask for tougher sentencing for violent crimes against children in the U.S.

Statistics on crimes against children each year in the U.S. are staggering, sobering and should compel EVERY adult, parent, father, uncle, son, grandfather and all mothers, aunts, daughters, grandmothers and women to be moved to do something… NOW. At a recent Washington Congressional hearing in June, 2011, experts believe nearly 10 children die each day from abuse. NCANDS, the national database for crimes against children, didn’t receive data from 3 states in their latest report! States are NOT mandated to report child fatalities as a result of CAN or any type of abuse whether fatal or not! We are NOT seeking to create more bureaucracy, but rather, demanding our lawmakers begin to protect our children through stiffer sentencing for child abuse, including mandatory life without parole for violent crimes such as child rape and murder. Unlike many diseases, child abuse is a willful act and 100% preventable through TOUGHER law enforcement and education. We MUST let our nation and lawmakers know that Americans will NO LONGER tolerate inadequate laws and light sentencing. Now is the time and we need YOUR HELP on April 22, 2013.

Register to walk by CONTACTING YOUR CITY’S FB PAGE, IF YOU WISH TO LEAD OR CO-LEAD A CITY, send your PHONE#, COMPLETE NAME, EMAIL ADDRESS & CITY: MACACoordinator@gmail.com all registrations MUST BE COMPLETE. MACAcoordinator@gmail.com
All Leads get full support and given step by step instructions and items you need. You simply send emails with the press release and flyer for your city to the media and organizations in your city. Co-leads assist with emails.

Your city/town is not on the list? You can be our lead for your town! please register with MacaCoordinator@gmail.com and we will get in touch with you and send you all the instructions on what to do.

There cannot be ANY kind of fundraising going on at ANY walk throughout the entire nation. NO MONEY EXCHANGES HANDS AT OUR WALKS. If anyone involved with the walk in your city is fundraising, asking for donations, having contests with money or asking for money for anything EXCEPT our MACA shirts (which are $20), DO NOT give it to them and promptly write us a message here. Businesses and organizations CAN donate goods/services, this is NOT considered fundraising. If you are unsure please ASK us!*** ALL of our walks across the nation need to be unified and stay on track. These walks are the most important thing! Our children need our voice!
If you would like more information about MACA please see our notes section.

“These alleged crimes involve a man who preyed on a minor while in a position of authority and respect as an educator,” DeKalb County District Attorney Robert James said in a statement. “This plea reflects the acts of a monster who molested, abuse and took advantage of women and children in DeKalb County. We hope this begins the healing process for all individuals and families affected by these heinous crimes.

In 1873, Etta Wheeler, a nurse was making rounds in a tenement, in New York City. She had heard stories about a girl who was being held hostage and abused by her foster family. After talking her way into the apartment, she caught her first glimpse of nine year old Mary Ellen.

The child was barefoot, half clothed and half starved. A cat of nine tails lay nearby, and her arms and legs showed the effects of its use. Her face bore the look of suppression and misery. Over the next two months, Mrs. Wheeler reported the child’s plight to police and charities trying to save her, nothing was done. As there were no laws to protect children, no laws were being broken.

She contacted Henry Bergh, the president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which had been started nine years earlier. Bergh convinced a judge to allow the society to intervene.

“I saw the child brought in wrapped in a horse blanket, at the sight of which men wept aloud.” Jacob Riis.

Mary Ellen’s body was one large bruise, and her face wore scares and slashes caused by her foster mother’s scissors. Using the only tools available, which were laws placed on the books, to protect animals, they saved Mary Ellen. This was the first case of removal, and New York City was the first to establish a child protective agency.

Mrs. Wheeler and the suffragettes then went on a campaign against child abuse. Their programs were rooted in prejudice as most were women of wealth and privilege. However misguided their efforts, something was being done.

Throughout history, children have been viewed as property or as possessions. In many cases, people had as many children as possible, to provide the free labor needed to run the farm or business. Up until the Civil War children were being used as slave labor throughout the world. While slaves had some rights and were considered valuable for their monetary worth, children held no such value. A war was fought in this country, to end slavery, as children worked in factories and died every day from starvation and worse.

If you became an orphan before the Civil War and for some time after, your chances of living to be old enough to escape the orphanage were slim. After the Civil War children were taken from families at an alarming rate. To be placed in foster care or an orphanage, at that time, was akin to being placed in prison. The entire affair was a good old boy system which further victimized those placed into it. Since most of those being taken were children from the poor, immigrant neighborhoods, no one cared.

Then child abuse advocacy faded again. Throughout World War I, the depression and World War II, it was ignored. The family needed to be a strong, sacred institution so children took one for the country.

Child abuse advocacy mirrors, social revolution, and as it had begun during the years following the abolishment of slavery, it resurfaced during the Civil Rights movement. In the early sixties, laws were passed requiring doctors and teachers to report suspected child abuse. It was during this time it was discovered X-rays could clearly distinguish between normal broken bones and those broken during abuse. For the first time, child abuse could be proven.

With the freedom of the Cultural Revolution, sexual abuse was discussed for the first time. Studies determined that all forms of abuse ran across our entire society, crossing all cultural, economic and sociological boundaries. Abuse was no longer believed to afflict only the poor, which was never true.

What followed was a veritable witch hunt. For years, allegations of abuse destroyed children and parents alike. While much was accomplished, many innocents were persecuted. Many lived in fear of a system, still rife with better than thou people. Children and adults, mostly from the lower classes feared and loathed it. We are still dealing with the backlash of that witch hunt today.

Last year there were three million reported cases of abuse in our country. Admittedly the studies, which produce these statistics, indicate there are two unreported to each reported case. That means nine million cases in America last year. Of those, only nine percent resulted in charges. Out of that nine percent, only nine percent resulted in a conviction. There are five children beaten to death in our country, each day at the hands of those they know, love and trust. Their average age is three years old. This number has recently been raised to ten per day.

The child protection service agencies have now become reactionary entities. So many laws were placed into effect, after the witch hunts, that in many cases, their hands are now tangled in red tape. By the time a child can be removed, many times that child is damaged beyond repair. They will go on to visit the horrors they endured upon another generation of innocent children.

The thousands of Social Workers and Foster Parents are not at fault. They are far outnumbered and poorly supported. These jobs are the hardest on the earth and those who do them are unsung heroes.

Foster Parents must give of their hearts freely, to children who have no idea what a heart is and place no value on the gift. The Foster Parents I’ve talked to, assure me one child who becomes a productive, loving person, is worth the hundreds of broken hearts and spent tears they endure.

Now for the question I am asked repeatedly. What can be done about child abuse? Clearly our current system does not work. Greater minds than mine have worked on this problem for the last century. Yet the statistics grow. Frustrated, the majority of our population continues to turn a blind eye. They ignore the numbers which continue to grow despite the educated, enlightened nature of our country and the world.

When a thing hurts too much, it’s easy to look away. I deal with this daily; advocates against child abuse are not popular and spend much of their time speaking to smiling, agreeing people who will never speak to them again. Many of us who were abused have inherent flaws, which prevent us from being Foster Parents or adopting. In many cases, the educated, have no experience and look down on those who do. They forsake the help of those who have a better understanding and a vested interest in stopping this epidemic. I say again, beware the self righteousness of the right. It’s easy to pass judgment on children when you have no clue what they are going through.

Now for the answer, if there is one. In some societies, children are trained to hate beginning at their earliest moments. I am in no way suggesting such a course of action. However, to put an end to such hate requires wiping the slate clean.

What I mean to say is, in order to decrease the massive amounts of abuse; the change needs to start with the young. First a few words of caution. Already the country believes that a child must simply cry wolf to condemn their parents. I am told often that we have lost control of our children, because we can no longer punish them. Furthermore, they are disrespectful and lazy. Again, excuses to stand by and allow what is happening, to continue. However, to some extent this is true and another indicator that our system is failing. If you don’t know the difference between discipline and beating a three year old to death, write me, I’ll explain it.

We cannot legislate this out of our society. We may jail as many as we like, but until all Americans understand, to our core, that children are not possessions or property there will be no change. Parenting classes given to adults will not make this go away. This change must start with our children. We need to develop a curriculum that can be taught, beginning in the first grade and continued throughout their education. One which makes it totally unacceptable to hurt a child under any circumstances.

The program D.A.R.E works on this principle, and it has made a difference. Now even smoking cigarettes has become deplorable in the eyes of many children. We need child abuse to become repulsive to all people, before they reach adulthood. Even if we take such measures, it may take up to three generations for this program, to make a difference. The monetary cost might be great, but our jails are full of the abused and our homes are full of the unhappy. Make no mistake we are paying heavily for what we do to our children. We must break the cycle, and it will require all of us to do it. Just because, abuse did not touch your household, does not mean that someone you love will not be abused, assaulted or otherwise victimized by someone who was abused. Now, for my question to you. Why does our society continue to become more violent? Nine million cases of abuse each year, HELLO.

We need to gather together people with the education and determination to make those in our government, who can make a difference, make one. Please feel free to contact me and point out how wrong I am, or to put petty differences aside and change the world for our children. kennesaw@kennesawtaylor.com

This dude’s alleged actions are grosser than grossest. It also may be disturbing to some readers — you’ve been warned.

At approximately 6 p.m. Wednesday, Montgomery County Precinct 4 Constables requested a search of the New Caney motor home occupied by Shane Anthony Trumble, his father and his grandmother, Cynthia Sue Trumble of New Caney. Shane Trumble, a registered sex offender and out-of-state fugitive from Cleveland, Ohio, was suspected of possessing a “disturbing amount” of kiddie porn following an investigation by the Montgomery County Precinct 4 Constable’s Office Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC).

After officers identified themselves and demanded that Shane Trumble, 23, step outside of the trailer home, Cynthia Trumble, 62, apparently went all New Caney by threatening to shoot the officers with the gun that she had aimed at them.

Grandmother and grandson eventually relented and allowed officials to search their trailer at the Wild Country RV Park on Farm to Market Road 1485. Officers found a gold mine of disgust that Shane Trumble had allegedly stashed away. (Get ready for the gross.)

According to the Montgomery County Precinct 4 Constable’s Office, uniformed police officers found approximately 20 gigabytes of child pornography on various iPads, computers and storage drives. Officials say that dozens of pairs of children’s underwear were deposited inside of a small trash can.

Shane Trumble has been charged with four counts of second-degree felony possession/promotion of child pornography. He’s also been charged as an out-of-state fugitive from justice because of an active felony warrant for possession of child porn in Ohio. (Before relocating to Texas, Trumble had been registered as a sex offender in North Carolina. However, he had failed to do so since arriving in New Caney last summer, which is another no-no.)

By the way, the burner that grandma threatened to shoot the officers with was a BB gun. Cynthia Trumble was charged with interference with public duties, a class B misdemeanor. After she was released on $1,000 bond, she and her son (Shane Trumble’s father) faced eviction from the RV park by the landlord.

As of the time this post was published, Trumble was being held without bond at the Montgomery County jail in Conroe and will be extradited to Ohio to face the music. (We have a message out to Montgomery County officials regarding his extradition.